I'm a Emacs user, I've tried sublime, and it seems a very nice editor, also the plugin development is in python rather than lisp, which allows more active development from the community.

But.... sublime is not open source. What does it mean? It means that if Jon Skinner dies, nobody will continue his work, and sublime will be forgotten forever. It also means that if Jon change the code for bad, nobody will be able to solve it or fork it. If Jon doesn't create a port for ARM architecture, nobody will be able to do it either. If one day Jon want to charge us $200 for an update, nobody will be able to stop it.

I absolutely agree with this. It isn't open-source, it's commercial software. Someone has spent a lot of time in building something which helps me in my day job. That's worth cold hard cash. If Jon dies, I either keep using my current version or switch to some new hotness when it makes a compelling argument. If Jon changes it for the worse, I'll either keep using my current version or switch...

At the end of the day, the cost for this software is not a lot of money and if it helps me in my professional life I'm happy to pay it. Not everything has to be free software. There are lots of free text/programming editors out there (I wrote one many years ago), but if you want to use this one, this version, you pay for it. It's not rocket science.

I absolutely agree with this. It isn't open-source, it's commercial software. Someone has spent a lot of time in building something which helps me in my day job. That's worth cold hard cash. If Jon dies, I either keep using my current version or switch to some new hotness when it makes a compelling argument. If Jon changes it for the worse, I'll either keep using my current version or switch...

At the end of the day, the cost for this software is not a lot of money and if it helps me in my professional life I'm happy to pay it. Not everything has to be free software. There are lots of free text/programming editors out there (I wrote one many years ago), but if you want to use this one, this version, you pay for it. It's not rocket science.

Open source doesn't mean that is free, there are a lot of open source projects where you have to pay, I´m not complaining about the price, which I think is fair, but about the licence.

There is a belief in OSS communities, that if a project is open-source, then someone will pick it up after it's abandoned by the original author/leader and that development will continue as if nothing happened. Just like for every project that has been handed to Apache Foundation or Kod for that matter.

I don't believe it to be true, and I accept that if Jon decides to abandon Sublime Text then the editor is dead. That's it. Open source or not. Without a strong lead and designed by a committee ST2 would be nothing like it's now. W/o Jon ST's source code has little value!!

Once I accepted that, the difference between open and closed source development of core editor became meaningless (to me). There are people who will not touch a closed source software with a stick, and that's OK, I understand that.

There are plenty of open source text editors out there, use one of them if that is a requirement for you. Nothing stops you to turn one of those other editors into exactly what you want, you have the full source code access to them and can do anything you want.

But you likely won't, and that's where I agree with wuub. Without Jon ST's source code has little value. Besides most of what I want to configure in the editor I can do with the existing plugin/settings/theme/etc API without needing the actual source code, so I'm happy.

Having access to the source is important. It's important to me. That doesn't mean it needs to be open source.

Is (or could) the source be available to registered users? Could the license for the source include a clause that opens up the source at a later date or under certain conditions? Would that encourage people to pay for registration? Will it allow for ST2 to be used where security is critical (the source may be audited with only compiled in-house versions used). Would that help with bug/patch submissions? Well yes, to all of those.

Such a model has been proven to work too. Several for-profit, closed source, whatever-lable-you-put-on-them companies do offer such licenses along with their source code.

This seems like a low risk option too. Consider how many open source editors there are out there. Consider the statements about whether Jon is the critical element or whether the source code is.

Is there a reasonable fear/concern that prevents the source from being available to users?